What Actions do you use? How do you get your colors so bright?

I struggled with this one for a while. I’ve tried Jinky’s and Totally Rad Actions to name a few. But what I’ve realized is that my best post-processing was when I hand processed each image individually – without the use of actions. So these days, I don’t use actions because I’ve kind of created my own processing protocol. Basically, I play around with brightness, saturation, hue & color balance to achieve the bright colors seen in my portfolio. For black & whites, I just bring the saturation all the way down, and then tweak the brightness & maybe do a little to the curves. Maybe one day, I will put together a BSP Action set! Be sure to sign up via email in case it actually happens. Oh, and I process everything is PS.

How do you get your images so sharp?

Another one that took me a while to “get”. I’m always trying to improve my work, so I am by no means perfect, but so far, I have realized the following: (1) Exposure is key! If you are underexposed and try to compensate by increasing it in ACR, you will get grainy and slightly blurred images – practice nailing your exposure. I like to overexpose by 1 or 2 stops. (2) Find your shutter speed sweet spot. I’m a bit of a shaker at times, especially when chasing toddlers, so I never go below 200, unless I’m photographing newborns, in which case I can go down to 160. I try to bump it up as high as possible to ensure sharp images. (3) In camera sharpening – sometimes, I use custom camera settings when I shoot JPG and sharpen a bit. You can also up the saturation when shooting in JPG to cut down on post processing time. Although, my first love is a RAW file (4) Use PS to “sharpen for web” and “sharpen for print” – you can do this manually, or use an Action.

Love your bokeh – how do you do it?

Get as close to the subject as possible…and place your subject as far away from the background as possible to maximize your bokeh. Also, if using a zoom lens, keep it short! To achieve maximum blur, I use my prime lenses quite a bit.

Do you offer workshops or tutorials?

Not yet. I would like to offer workshops in the near future…and will be working on various tutorials to air on my blog and youtube!

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